Homeland Security Department to Aid in Voter ID Efforts

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has agreed to allow Colorado and other states access to its databases to help verify the citizenship of some voters, according to the Denver Post.

The announcement came Monday after Colorado, Florida, and other states had threatened legal action to force the access that state elections officials argued was required by law to help them remove noncitizens from the voter rolls.

“I’m pleased that DHS has agreed to work with states to verify the citizenship of people on the voter rolls and help reduce our vulnerability,” Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Gessler said. “Coloradans deserve to know we have these most basic protections for election integrity.”

A spokesman in Gessler’s office told the Post the information collected from Homeland Security for comparison with state records would not result in anyone being immediately purged from voter rolls.

Instead, letters will be mailed to people who are flagged as possible noncitizens to give them a chance to verify their voting registration status.

It will then be up to the county election officials to actually determine if anyone in their voting districts should be eliminated from the registration system.

Under federal law, however, any changes to the voting rolls for the Nov. 6 election this year must be made by Aug. 8.